I was just reading about the new Going Rogue expansion for City of Heroes, the principal new feature of which is that “[f]or the first time in the game, heroes and villains will be able to switch sides with an interesting set of morality quests.”
Morality — and its consequences on the game world — have been a growing trend in games for a number of years, and one can in particular point to any number of BioWare games to illustrate the example. Knights of the Old Republic featured a fairly simple derivation of the “karma” system common to earlier games (various Ultima titles included, to a degree). Games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect boasted more complex morality systems that moved beyond the somewhat Pelagian basis of the karma counter, tracking good and evil on separate scales rather than allowing past evils to be undone or smoothed over by later good deeds.
Indeed, in many such games and game series, the moral choices made in one game are — or can be — carried over to the next entry in the series, reshaping the game world and playthrough experience in ways both small and large. (And yes, I’m totally stoked to see what Mass Effect 3 does with this notion. In fact, I’m saving up my “True Renegade”, “kill all potential ally species” playthrough for its release.)
Now, no Ultima title that I can think of ever really implemented a formal morality system, in the sense of something that the player could track (certainly, nothing so apparent in-game as e.g. Mass Effect’s Paragon and Renegade score bars). At the same time, a rudimentary morality system was in place in many of the Ultima titles. Stealing when a shopkeeper was present brought the guards down on your head; attacking someone in the presence of witnesses could mean a similar guard-delivered beat-down. Some Ultimas also presented you with situations to challenge your Virtue. Supposedly, there was actually a more evolved karma system than this in some of the Ultima titles, but I never really noticed it…even when I tried to play through the game in the most asshole-like manner possible.
Indeed, about the worst that would happen is that the people I stole from or pushed around would stop speaking to me…for about a day, maybe two. After that…why, yes, they would gladly sell me that two-handed sword.
Now why, you might ask, am I musing about this at all. Probably, you’d rather I get off my fat butt (okay, it’s not that fat) and get those downloads restored. And yeah, I probably should do that as well. However, I’ve twice now been asked by a certain Mr. Paul Barnett, who has been “looking to collect thoughts and views that fans have about Ultima.”
So in the absence of my ability to contact him in return, I’ve decided to launch something of a new feature here at the site: I’d like to collect everyone’s feedback about aspects of the Ultima games. And this is the basic format that such outings will follow: I’ll open up with some musing about something or other, and then invite comments.
Leave your thoughts and tell your friends!
